Marketing, advertising & media intelligence

An Achilles' Heel of the outdoor industry is its perceived lack of measureability and targeting. But iSite Media has taken a big step to remedying that, with the launch of a suite of products that claim to deliver highly targeted outdoor media solutions and offer media agencies better campaign planning tools.

iSite worked alongside third party geo-spatial experts and data analysts to analyse 200,000 road segments, map over 22,000 bus routes and build a proprietary business location database. This analysis has been cross referenced with census and purchasing data, and for the first time ever it is able to calculate "bus opportunity to see based on real-time traffic data and bus route info" and offer "socio and geo-demographic profile of every transit campaign". It also has data on over 30,000 businesses, allowing for campaigns targeted by proximity.

Around 200 industry folk gathered at the Cloud last night to get a run down and iSite's market development manager Rupert Fenton says it had some great feedback about the new innovations, which have been a year-and-a-half in the making.

"It's not difficult for them to get their heads around it, because these types of things exist for other media ... There's certainly demand from the industry for measurement."

He says it surveyed its customers and asked what the most important thing was for the industry and measureability came out by far the highest. And the higher up you go, the more it's requested, he says.

The outdoor industry is working together to find a way to measure it, but Fenton doesn't think this initiative will hamper that process, partially because iSite chief executive Wayne Chapman is also the chair of OMANZ and he realises measurement is important for the whole industry.

In a release, Chapman said: "Bus advertising is uniquely flexible so is perfectly positioned to deliver these targeted campaigns. There is a demand from our customers to improve the measurability of bus advertising so we have delivered an independently audited bus visual system that works with road user journey data to deliver an audience opportunity to see. We’ve framed this as a daily count to dovetail with the existing currency of billboard visuals. iSite media is committed not just to delivering the best outdoor advertising products, but also to improving the science behind the art of delivering an effective campaign."

The Business won the iSite account recently and it has created the 'highly targeted outdoor media' campaign. It also produced a nice promo video starring OMD's Andrew Reinholds and Rebecca Bradley, who obviously enjoyed the opportunity to get their spy on. It was directed by Blu Stevens.

At a more holistic level, this investment comes at a good time for the outdoor sector, which has an aim of nabbing five percent of total advertising spend and appears to be back to full health after a post-RWC dip. Gross media revenue for outdoor in Q2 increased by 22 percent compared to the same period in 2012, reaching $16.6 million for the quarter.

“It’s very encouraging to see advertisers increasing their investment in our sector," says Adam McGregor, general manager of OMANZ. "The figures show a second period of strong growth for the industry in 2013, building on the 16 percent reported in Q1 this year. The total revenue reported for the first half of 2013 is $32 million, which is 19 percent up on the corresponding period of 2012. Confidence in the market is certainly returning, which bodes well for a strong performance overall by year-end.”

OMANZ members reported significant levels of spend from the banking, automotive and telco sectors.

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On Monday, Whittaker’s launched its latest novelty chocolate-lolly mash up with a chocolatey answer to retro bakesale treat coconut ice. The Coconut Ice Surprise chocolate has a twist though, 20c from each block goes to Plunket – a charity which New Zealanders agree is a worthy cause. However, to relate the chocolate to the charity, Whittaker's has built the campaign around baby gender reveal parties, causing a backlash from the public who argue gender norms have expanded beyond blue for boys and pink for girls.

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